Editor Modes

An editor mode is how you work on a tab right now. There are four: Diagram, Draw, Illustrate and Plan. A mode decides which tools are in front of you; it never changes what is on the tab. Switch from Diagram to Draw and every shape stays exactly where it was, and the strokes you draw in Draw mode are still there when you switch back.

Three words describe how documents and tabs differ, and they mean different things:

• Mode is how a tab is worked on. It is yours: someone else on the same tab can be in a different mode at the same time.
• Kind is what a tab is. Almost every tab is a general tab that works in every mode; the Event Storming board is the one tab with its own kind, its own notation and no modes.
• Template is what a document was made from. A Kanban board or a retrospective is a general tab made from a template, never a kind of tab of its own. See Templates.

The Four Modes

• Diagram: shapes, arrows, the palette and snapping. The palette opens on Popular and offers Shapes, Write, Draw, Build, Icons, Stickers, Tech, Media and Collaborate, and shapes snap into line with alignment guides. This is where every new document starts unless its template says otherwise.
• Draw: pens, the eraser and shape recognition, for sketching by hand. The palette's shapes give way to Draw's own tools: Select, three markers, Text, the Path tool, the Eraser (whole strokes or just part of one) and your pinned shapes. With floating panels they fill the Palette panel; with the Toolbar layout they form a dock across the top. See Draw Mode.
• Illustrate: pages, for building a finished visual or writing an article. The tab is laid out as sheets in a row, each with a settings cog and a + after the last to add another, and the palette trades pens, tech icons and Collaborate for Components, Devices and Data charts. Export from Illustrate saves the pages. See Illustrate Mode.
• Plan: boards of items, for running work through columns of cards. The palette holds Cards, Boards, Widgets, Metrics, Visualisations, Content and Tools, and opens on Cards. The bottom-right corner gains Trash, Cards and Card Types, while the Layers and Quick Style panels step aside. See Plan Mode.

Every mode is on for everyone, with nothing to turn on in Settings.

The Mode Switch

The mode switch shows the mode you are in. Press it to open a short menu of the four modes, the current one ticked, and choose another. Choosing switches at once and closes the menu; Escape or a click elsewhere closes it without switching.

• With floating panels, the switch sits in the Palette panel's title row, beside its help and minimise buttons, with the mode's name next to its icon.
• With the Toolbar layout, it sits beside the menu button in the card at the top left, as an icon.
• It stays put in every mode, so it is always where you left it, even in Draw mode.

Shift+D moves to the next mode from anywhere on the canvas: Diagram, then Draw, Illustrate, Plan and back to Diagram. The switch's menu shows ⇧D on the mode it leads to, and screen readers announce the mode you land in ("Draw mode"). Shift+D is listed under Settings › Keyboard, and it stops working with every other shortcut when you turn shortcuts off.

Your Mode and Opens In

• Your mode is yours. It is remembered for you, for each tab, in this browser. Switching changes nothing for anyone else, so two people can work on the same tab in different modes at once and still see each other's changes live.
• The tab pill shows your mode. Each tab in the tab bar starts with the icon of the mode you work in on that tab, the same icon the switch uses.
• Each tab opens in one mode for anyone who has not switched on it yet. That is the tab's Opens in, Diagram unless something set it otherwise.
• Your switch moves Opens in too, when you can edit the tab. So a tab opens in the mode its editors last worked in. People already on the tab stay in the mode they are in.
• To set it directly, open the tab menu (the ⋯ on the tab, or right-click the tab), open Opens in and choose Diagram, Draw, Illustrate or Plan. Each choice says what the mode is for. It sets the mode for everyone arriving later and switches you to it too. On a locked tab the choices are greyed out, and switching modes there leaves Opens in as it is.

• New documents and new tabs open in Diagram, whatever mode you are in, unless the template you pick opens somewhere else: Blank Whiteboard opens in Draw, Blank Illustration in Illustrate and Blank Plan in Plan.
• In the Explorer, the Opens in filter finds documents by the mode they were made to open in. See Filters.

On a Phone

A phone has no mode switch: the top row belongs to the palette's strip, and Shift+D needs a keyboard. To change mode, open the tab menu (the ⋯ on the tab), open Opens in and choose a mode. That switches you there as well, and sets the mode the tab opens in for everyone. On a phone every mode starts on the Hand tool, so a drag moves the canvas.

Who Can Switch

• Editors of a general tab get the switch, Shift+D and Opens in.
• People who can only view a tab see it in the mode it opens in, with no switch, and Shift+D does nothing.
• Event Storming boards have no modes: they keep their own tools and notation, show no switch and have no Opens in.

What Switching Keeps

Switching is instant, with no reload and no change to the document.

• Everything on the tab stays, in the same place and the same colours, for everyone. A board from Plan mode is an element like any other in Diagram mode, and a pen stroke is a stroke in every mode.
• Your selection and your view stay: the canvas does not move, and a text edit or a drag in progress is finished first.
• Your tool is put down. A pen or an armed shape never carries into the next mode. Each mode starts on Select, except Plan, which starts on Hand because its cards take the pointer.
• The palette returns to its first category: Popular, or Cards in Plan, so it never shows a category the new mode leaves out.
• What a mode makes keeps its style. A shape drawn in Draw mode keeps its Ink outline and no fill in Diagram mode, and a text box made in Draw mode keeps hugging its words.
• Draw mode's background is yours. Plain, Dots or Grid shows only to you in Draw mode; Diagram mode shows the tab's own background, which is also what every export uses.

Leaving Illustrate

Diagram, Draw and Plan modes do not show pages, so when you can edit a tab that has something on it, switching out of Illustrate (with the switch or Shift+D) asks first:

• A tab with content but no articles shows a small card beside the switch: Switch to Diagram? (or Draw, or Plan). What you change in the other mode may not fit back onto your pages when you return. Press Switch to go, or Cancel (or Escape) to stay.
• A tab with articles asks Turn Articles Into Pages?: Turn Into Pages, Keep as Articles or Cancel. See Writing Articles.

An empty tab, a locked tab and someone who can only view switch straight away. Choosing a mode from Opens in switches without asking.

Leaving Plan never asks: boards and cards stay on the tab as they are, and their cards work again when you come back to Plan.

Templates and Modes

Every template opens in one mode, and its card in the template picker shows that mode's icon before its name. To see only one mode's templates, use the Show templates for menu beside the search box and choose Diagram, Draw, Illustrate or Plan; Everything shows them all again. The Popular shelf leads with one blank per mode: Blank Diagram, Blank Whiteboard, Blank Illustration and Blank Plan. See Finding Templates for a Mode.